Deuteragonist
by pinkdigi
Summary: Hogwarts may be a castle, but this is no fairytale. [RHr oneshot]


**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.**

**Deuteragonist  
**—

He smiles nervously. She waves awkwardly. And they both get on the train, heading in the same direction.

—

_Nobody will notice_.

He wonders to himself now, as he searches for an empty compartment to sit in, why he ever let himself believe his mum.

_Nobody will notice that you're wearing your brother's robes_. _And so what if Scabbers isn't as nice as a brand new owl_?

Their stares burn holes in the back of his head as he walks alone. He wonders why he ever thought going to this school was a good idea.

—

He has red hair and freckles and is nothing special. He knows this, of course, and sees no reason why he should start lying now, just because he is sitting beside the Boy Who Lived.

The compartment door slides open to reveal the girl he spotted earlier amidst the crowd of students – the one he smiled at, the one who looked even more frightened and awkward than he.

But she hides her inadequacies behind her brilliance. And that is their first difference.

—

_Go away_, he tells her.

She hears with her ears but she listens with her heart, so she sits down beside him and makes herself known as a constant presence in his poor excuse for a life.

—

They argue, but it's what they _do_, just as Parvati and Lavender sit in the corner and gossip, just as Harry goes off and saves the world every chance he gets.

His words cut her, tear her down, but she does it to him first, and so he doesn't let it bother him when he hears her crying one night after he says she is nothing but a living, breathing textbook.

—

His hair is not red and there are no freckles on his face and he is a famous boy.

He is strong and confident, but stumbles over himself as he asks her to the Yule Ball. It is so unexpected that she mumbles _yes _without even thinking.

He is respectful and courteous, and never calls her names.

And she wishes he could mean something to her.

—

She has a dirty, awful secret. And she will just die if he finds out.

She doesn't write to Viktor. She sends letters back and forth to her mum, and when he asks her who she writes to, she lies.

She _lies_.

—

_I'll never forgive you for this_, she says, but in truth she can't even remember what they are fighting about.

—

He is the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.

He is supposed to be resting in the bed next to her, but he never listens to those stupid rules, anyway. He stands over her and whispers that she shouldn't try to move.

She remembers the Department of Mysteries. She remembers Dolohov, and then pain, and then blackness.

He brushes the hair off her forehead and when a single tear drops from his eye onto her face, she pretends not to notice.

—

They come so close so many times, but it never happens.

He wonders if they just aren't meant to be.

—

_I hate you_, she tells him, but she loves him more than she thought possible.

—

He has always said that he will put himself between Harry and the Killing Curse during battle if it comes down to it. That is the solution to the problem pressing on everyone's mind.

But he never considers what will happen if he isn't there to jump in front.

—

He holds his sister as she dies.

He waits until the light is gone from her eyes, until her hand is too cold to belong to the sweet, fiery girl who used to light up a room just by entering it.

He kisses her forehead once and stands up, looking around at all the fallen bodies, wondering if he will find _her_ among them if he only looks hard enough.

He sees Dolohov on the ground, dead, and is comforted by the fact that he put the bastard there himself.

They have been thrown across a chasm; they are on one side and their innocence has been left on the other.

And there is no going back to anything now.

—

Hogwarts may be a castle, but this is no fairytale.

The Final Battle litters bodies all across the grounds, covering the Quidditch Pitch where she used to watch him play, and the grass beside the pond where she felt sure he was about to kiss her once. They will never know, for certain, how many people have died as a result of this war.

Really, though, only two of the casualties matter.

One is Lord Voldemort.

And the other is Harry Potter.

—

They have been the Golden Trio – _HarryRonHermione _– for so long.

And now, they are a duo. _RonHermione_. It doesn't flow. And it doesn't leave a good taste in either of their mouths.

—

She can't fill those silences, the ones that come nearly every few moments, the ones that used to be filled with the noise of Ginny's laughter and Harry's fingers drumming absentmindedly on the table, the sound of Ron's victorious cheer when he beats Ginny in chess or the scratching of quill as she corrects Harry's Potions essay.

—

He stares at her and she stares back, her eyes vacant and looking exactly like his. And when it becomes too much, they both go to their beds, trying to forget that they once had the world.

—

She cries, and he doesn't know what to do.

—

She goes back home to her parents.

He can't bring himself to write her, to invite her back to The Burrow, because even _he _doesn't want to be there anymore. There are too many memories.

He gets a flat, just like he and Harry had always planned.

And he forgets to tell her where it is; forgets to say, _Drop by sometime_.

—

Scrimgeour wants to honour them for their bravery. He holds a ceremony to present them with medals, ones that say _Order of Merlin, First Class_ on them, among other meaningless words.

She doesn't show up.

Neither does he.

—

She runs into him two months later in Muggle London.

He smiles at her as he passes by, just as he would to any stranger sharing his sidewalk, but then does a double take.

_Hello_, he says, but really this is the first stage of a long _goodbye_, and they both know it.

Their exchange is tense – they should be screaming at each other and releasing all this awful pressure so they can just be _them _again, but they can't.

What good did fighting ever do, anyway?

Fighting just wasted time.

And there isn't enough time in their lives for them to waste on each other anymore.

—

She doesn't like romance. She has no time for it.

_I – look, I – I mean, I – bugger, you know that I –_

He told her that once, when they were young and stupid, before their hearts were blackened by everything around them.

It is the closest to _I love you _that they ever get.

But she doesn't need love. She doesn't need hugs and kisses and gestures and declarations.

Harry and Ginny can't love. Why should she get to?

She needs _books _and _facts_ and _ideas_.

That is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

And maybe, if she learns everything there is to know about everything there is, she will be able to pinpoint exactly where they all went wrong.

—

It should've been him, not Harry.

Harry would know what to do.

—

She looks at him and sees summer at The Burrow and lunchtimes in the library, late nights in the Common Room and secret visits to Hagrid's Hut after curfew. Prefect rounds and trips to the third floor corridor and time spent at Harry's bedside in the Hospital Wing. Invisibility Cloaks and chess sets and _Hogwarts, a History_, until she can't stand it.

—

She gets a job with the Ministry and relocates to France.

—

His mum tells him to write her.

Their friendship meant too much for him to send a stupid owl after all this time has passed.

He goes to her flat. The man at the door says he can't be of any help. He's lived there for nearly two years and has no way of contacting the girl who lived there previously.

—

He walks through the train station on his way to meet his girlfriend. He has a ring in his pocket and he wonders if he should use it.

He catches a flash of brown hair out of the corner of his eye and finds himself running and shoving through the crowd to get to her.

He hasn't seen her in so many years, but it's her.

He _knows _it is.

—

He catches up to her just in time.

He taps her on the shoulder and she turns around. She's smiling at him, but it's awkward, as though she has recently forgotten how.

They stand there and everything that was never said flows out of them and charges the air around them until neither of them can take it, and so she mumbles something about having to get home to her kids, and he nods, pretending the words don't cut him somewhere deep inside the heart he forgot he had.

Does she even remember how much they used to mean to each other? And Harry?

He waves awkwardly. She smiles nervously. And they both get on their trains, heading in opposite directions.

—

_Deuteragonist(s)_ – _n._ the character(s) second in importance to the protagonist.


End file.
